IT'S THE responsibility of state officials to tell the public all they know about massive oil trains rumbling through northern New Jersey, including 11 towns in Bergen County. That's not happening and it's unacceptable.

The Record reported on Tuesday that up to 30 trains a week carrying crude oil found in North Dakota travel over the CSX River Line from Northvale to Ridgefield on their way to a refinery in Philadelphia. That information came not from Trenton, but from documents released by officials in New York, through which the trains also travel.

The New Jersey Office of Emergency Management says it plans to disclose only limited information about the oil trains, some of which are more than 100 tanker cars long.

"Releasing all of the records … would pose a homeland security risk," a spokesman told The Record.

That position is illogical. There is nothing secretive about large trains traveling through heavily populated northern New Jersey. People regularly see them and hear them. That includes those who may view the trains as a potential target.

Knowing more about the trains' schedule is not just for train buffs; it has a lot to do with public safety. Charles Aughenbaugh, the president of the New Jersey Deputy Fire Chiefs Association, put it this way:

"These trains travel every day at all different times, and the average guy needs to know this information because these trains are dangerous," he said.

All types of crude oil can be dangerous to transport, but industry experts say that the oil from the Bakkan oil fields in North Dakota has a lower flash point than other grades of crude. Another concern is that, for the most part, the oil is transported in aging, substandard tanker cars, although the federal government recently ordered upgrades.

There have been no accidents involving oil trains in New Jersey, but there certainly have been some elsewhere, most infamously last year in Quebec, when a train derailment and explosion killed 47 people and destroyed dozens of buildings in the town of Lac-Mégantic.

An overall problem with obtaining information about the trains is that railroads are regulated by the federal government, which traditionally has not considered transparency all that important. Only after a rail crash in Virginia earlier this year did the U.S. Transportation Department order railroads carrying Bakken crude to give state emergency officials details of their operations, including the number of trains and their routes.

But that information went only to state officials, and in some cases, rail companies asked that it not be publicly released. New York officials ignored that request and made the information public. Some other states have done the same.

New Jersey hasn't. The Record requested the information under the state's Open Public Records Act in June, and the state's response to date has been that the request is under review.

What is there to review? The oil trains are a potential safety risk to Bergen County residents. All we know from New York's release of records is that from 15 to 30 trains traveling through New Jersey each week are carrying at least 1 million gallons of oil.

The public should know more about the train schedules and the precise amount of oil being transported. It's the state's obligation to release that information.